Mr. Speaker, I am happy to explain the difference between what the Conservative Party did in terms of having the national party incur the cost for its ads and trying to pass it off on local campaigns, and what the Liberal Party did in the situation in New Brunswick.
In a province like New Brunswick, there are two newspapers that are distributed throughout the province that cover every riding in the province, a francophone and an anglophone daily newspaper. Two or three weeks before the end of the election, in a conference call with the 10 New Brunswick Liberal candidates, the New Brunswick campaign co-chairs asked if we were interested in participating in a regional media buy on the Saturday before the election.
The parliamentary secretary talks about the Liberal Party of Canada. He forgot the bracket after that which says “New Brunswick”, because it was organized by the New Brunswick campaign in Fredericton. He also forgets that is precisely the kind of activity that Elections Canada accepts as being legitimate advertising. We did not have in and out transfers. We had a decision of local campaigns to pay for an ad themselves. It was not imposed upon us and the add was run in the province in which we were candidates.
In the Conservative example, New Brunswick candidates appeared on ads that were running in Nova Scotia. A lot of people from my riding may go to the casino in Halifax but we would not have thought it was an appropriate expense to run ads in a Halifax publication.